A message to campaigners

The Changing Places consortium has been campaigning for a change in 'Part M' building regulations to include Changing Places toilets. With your campaigning support we achieved agreement that this would be considered and the consortium had a number of meetings with the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) to that effect. However, since the coalition Government came in to being the prospect of achieving this has been fading in a climate where the aim is deregulation.
Consortium members met recently with the DCLG again and they explained they need to demonstrate that all other avenues of supporting the development of the facilities have been explored. They see us a very successful campaign who are achieving a lot without regulation.
They have not written off including Changing Places toilets in part M in the future but are clear that we will not achieve it in the short term. However there is a silver lining to this news. The DCLG have proposed that they support the campaign by working with us to achieve a voluntary code/charter and engage with a range of large national level stakeholders to achieve sign up. This will include a group wider than the reach of Part M which does not cover railways and airports for example.
Consortium members will be meeting with the DCLG again to discuss how this can be taken forward. We will write up a briefing and put it on the website as soon as we know more but we have welcomed the early discussions on this. We think that the high level influence the DCLG could add to the work that all our amazingly successful local campaigners do could provide a powerful partnership.

With best wishes and with many thanks for all your hard work across the UK.